A wee cycle in the hills

Our last stop in Peru was Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca - it´s one of those places that has never really sounded real so it was weird to actually be there. We visited the floating islands, which were really tranquil, despite the hoards of tourists that go out there on boats. Lake Titicaca is South America´s largest lake and used to be an inland sea. The Uros people fled to the lake to escape the Incas and made the floating islands out of the totora reeds, they also use the reeds to make their houses, to burn them to make fire to cook, to eat (they don´t taste of much) and to make gifts to sell to the tourists. Tourism is now vital to their income & even though it is a well oiled machine (you get to go into the houses and the ladies sing traditional songs for you) it was really interesting to learn about their culture. They have primary schools on the islands but the children go to the mainland for secondary school. They have even found a good use for all the empty plastic bottles - they now secure them to the bottom of their traditional reed boats, helping them float and making them last for 2 years instead of 8 months - brilliant re-cycling!


Our plan of going vegetarian in Bolivia was all going well for the first 7 hours when we reached Copacabana - after that it took a turn for the worse and I was ill for the next 2 days! Still not really sure what it was, but unfortunately it meant that we didn´t go out to the Isla del Sol - supposed to be the birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology. Instead we sat outside with our lovely view that we had from the place we were staying - we´d splashed out a bit ($30!) as a way of a belated anniversary gift to ourselves, but it didn´t turn out to be quite what we had in mind!


We spent the next few days in the capital, La Paz. It´s a pretty crowded and polluted place and I still wasn´t feeling great (it seems to take longer to recover at altitude) so we didn´t really do too much just wandering the streets in and out of the markets. The "witches market" is one of the famous ones, where you can buy all manner of love potions, remedies and all sorts of nasty looking things. A favourite seems to be the llama foetus´ which people buy to bury under the porches of new houses, said to bring good luck..I think i´ll risk the bad luck thanks!


Once I was feeling better I was duped into venturing out for a spot of easy cycling in the countryside, although this turned out to be down the "world´s most dangerous world", so not as easy going as I first thought, especially seeing as one of my last efforts on a mountain bike left me neck high in a peat bog ditch on the island of Colonsay! In fact it is a 64 km gravel "road", going down over 3,500 metres. You start off at La Cumbre and finish in Coroico and you go from freezing giant snow topped mountains into jungle. A new road opened last year so now 98% of traffic uses this, although you still get some very fast locals hurtling down it and scaring the bikers by tooting their horns once they are right up behind them. It was given the "world´s most dangerous road" title as when the road was used by traffic it was estimated that somewhere between 200-300 people died on it every year. In some places it is barely 3 metres wide and wet from small waterfalls that fall over it, eating away at the already crumbling edge, leaving an awesome view of the bottom of the canyon half a mile below!


It actually turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would and thankfully neither of us fell, or worse went over the edge (the last person to do this was in March earlier this year). Unfortunately a girl in our group came off her bike and broke her arm in two places, she was travelling back to the UK the next morning so that wouldn´t have made for a pleasant flight. The scenery was fantastic, although you had to try and not be distracted by it. The worse bit of the day was probably when we drove back up the road in the minibus back to La Paz - by this time it was dark and raining and it seemed a lot more scary than the way down. You noticed many things that you didn´t see the first time, like all of the crosses scattered along various points of the road side and just how narrow it was some places. All in all a great day..although once is definitely enough!

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